The equality problem

Telegraph View: Harriet Harman's approach has entrenched inequality.

Speaking in a south London community centre this week, Theresa May argued that equality has become not a noble goal, but "a dirty word… associated with the worst forms of pointless political correctness and social engineering". Harriet Harman, take a bow.

The Home Secretary was announcing her decision to scrap the clause in Miss Harman's Equality Act that placed a duty on all public bodies to take account of "the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage" at all times – so sweeping a requirement that it was labelled "socialism in one clause". This is welcome news: as Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem Home Office minister, told Parliament yesterday, "all the policy would have been was a bureaucratic box to tick… another form to fill in".

We urge Mrs May to be similarly ruthless towards the other clauses that await her approval. These include the need for the public sector workforce, across 27,000 separate bodies, to be monitored in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and disability, and the lifting of a ban on positive discrimination in recruitment.

The true tragedy of the Harman approach is not the hassle and expense it imposes – although the burden to business, especially small business, is of great concern. It is that it entrenches inequality. If any future Budget had reduced spending on the poorest, the "socio-economic duty" clause could, its advocates suggested, have been used to rule it illegal. Yet, as Iain Duncan Smith has argued forcefully, the existing approach just enmeshes the poor in dependency. Similarly, fixing our education system, and helping problem families at an earlier stage, will do more for equality than any number of quangos or directives. Mrs May is on the right track – but there is plenty more damage for her to repair.